In corporate environments, many employees spend a significant amount of time in meetings. Oftentimes, an employee may participate in a meeting that includes other employees whom they do not know. If an introduction is not made at the meeting, the employee later may be too embarrassed to introduce herself. Similarly, an employee may be in a meeting with other employees that they have met previously, but whose names they cannot remember. In this case the employee may be too embarrassed to introduce herself a second time.
Many corporate employees are issued computing devices that include wireless networking capabilities. For instance, many employees now have laptop or notebook computers that include wireless networking capabilities. Similarly, many employees may utilize cellular telephones or personal digital assistants (“PDAs”) that include wireless networking capabilities. Using these devices, an employee may be able to access remotely stored information regarding other employees in a meeting. However, if the names of the other employees are unknown, it is not possible to locate information regarding the other employees. It would also not be possible to discretely contact the other employees to ask for their contact information without knowing at least their name in advance. Thus, without knowing another employee's name in advance, it would not be possible to contact the other employee with follow up questions regarding the meeting or to send meeting notes to the other employee.
Similar situations also occur in non-corporate, consumer environments. For instance, public wireless data networks have become commonplace in coffee shops, book stores, and other retail locations. When using such networks, it is currently not possible for a user to identify other users of the network in the same location, discover information about the other users, or to determine whether other users of the wireless network located nearby have common interests.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that aspects of a computing system for locating and displaying information about users of proximately located computing devices are described below.